Posted on 04/06/2015 12:39:57 AM PDT by iowamark
ONCE upon a time in America, baby boomers paid for college with the money they made from their summer jobs. Then, over the course of the next few decades, public funding for higher education was slashed. These radical cuts forced universities to raise tuition year after year, which in turn forced the millennial generation to take on crushing educational debt loads, and everyone lived unhappily ever after...
In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher...
By 1980, state funding for higher education had increased a mind-boggling 390 percent in real terms over the previous 20 years. This tsunami of public money did not reduce tuition: quite the contrary.
For example, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in 1980, my parents were paying more than double the resident tuition that undergraduates had been charged in 1960, again in inflation-adjusted terms. And of course tuition has kept rising far faster than inflation in the years since: Resident tuition at Michigan this year is, in today’s dollars, nearly four times higher than it was in 1980.
State appropriations reached a record inflation-adjusted high of $86.6 billion in 2009. They declined as a consequence of the Great Recession, but have since risen to $81 billion. And these totals do not include the enormous expansion of the federal Pell Grant program, which has grown, in today’s dollars, to $34.3 billion per year from $10.3 billion in 2000.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Needless to say, he is a full professor and tenured. Great deal for him...not so great for taxpayers.”
I have been in and around the higher-ed “industry” for most of my adult life. Here are a few observations:
1. Yes, there are tenured professors who aren't worth the salary they are paid.
2. Yes, there are tenured professors who study arcane subjects the social value of which are difficult, if not impossible, to defend.
However,
3. There are many professors who work 60-70 hours per week, following their passion for understanding the fascinating world around them.
4. There are exciting breakthroughs in our understanding of biology, chemistry, cognition, and human behavior that regularly occur on college campuses, with and without the support of large research grants. Some of these discoveries have saved or improved countless lives and have contributed critically to the ongoing improvements in our collective well-being.
The aggrieved McDonald's workers are about to get this lesson in economics...
Why do the Democrats keep pushing taxpayer money at education?
A. Because they are such swell guys.
B. They’ve seen the evidence that more education helps our citizens.
C. What else are they going to do with that money.
D. They use it as money laundering for the Democrat Party.
Most of those injuries were caused by the fact early airbags only deployed in one way: full, rapid inflation. Since the early 2000’s, modern airbags have two to four deployment modes, and that mean a far lower bag inflation rate when the collision happens at low speeds—which in my case was only 27 mph. As such, except for the minor bruises, I walked away unscathed.
There is also the technology factor. Most colleges have IT units that between salaries of the employees and assets, handle millions. There are computer labs for students to use, computer stations in a lot of classrooms for presentation, smart boards, support for online classes and large scale software programs for campus-wide email, records and other administration.
How many computers were on the average college campus in 1980?
There is no point in telling every kid from the ‘hood’ that they need college, paid for by taxpayers, when most of them have no inclination to study further. If they have an interest in a hands-on skill and want to work toward it, that’s great!
“$25k price for cars also includes a lot of VERY EXPENSIVE mandates”.........
$25,000 is a VERY LOW END car without a lot of “bells and whistles” in today’s market. I think the writer should have used the price of the average pickup truck which would be more comparative to the cost of college. Most pickup trucks WITH the bells and whistles and of course, the mandates, will run in the neighborhood of $35,000 to as high as $50,000 plus. Explain why those vehicles (pickups) demand such a high price?
I do support Hillsdale College in Michigan.
Years ago I attended a history conference with my then-chairman. One speaker was a medievalist (now retired) who gave what to me was an interesting talk about a society in medieval Spain whose mission was to ransom Christians who had become prisoners of the Muslims. Afterwards my chairman was livid: his attitude was that we should only be interested in topics that will make our students better citizens.
What is the social value of knowing about the battle of Marathon or the battle of Cannae?
In 413 B.C. the Athenian forces besieging Syracuse were destroyed because, following a lunar eclipse, their general Nicias believed the soothsayers who told him that they should not go anywhere for 27 days. The delay in leaving led to them all being killed or captured, with few exceptions.
I'm thinking of going to a conference in October which would require traveling less than 27 days after a lunar eclipse. I'm pondering whether it's safe to do so, bearing Nicias' experience in mind.
Arcane knowledge rocks!
Years ago I attended a history conference with my then-chairman. One speaker was a medievalist (now retired) who gave what to me was an interesting talk about a society in medieval Spain whose mission was to ransom Christians who had become prisoners of the Muslims. Afterwards my chairman was livid: his attitude was that we should only be interested in topics that will make our students better citizens.
What is the social value of knowing about the battle of Marathon or the battle of Cannae?
In 413 B.C. the Athenian forces besieging Syracuse were destroyed because, following a lunar eclipse, their general Nicias believed the soothsayers who told him that they should not go anywhere for 27 days. The delay in leaving led to them all being killed or captured, with few exceptions.
I'm thinking of going to a conference in October which would require traveling less than 27 days after a lunar eclipse. I'm pondering whether it's safe to do so, bearing Nicias' experience in mind.
Arcane knowledge rocks!
“Why does a subject have to have “social value” for it to be OK for some people to specialize in it?”
I agree with you that many “arcane” subjects have social (or at least personal) value; and I believe that a “liberal arts” education has been, unwisely, devalued in recent years. The question is to what extent we want to spend taxpayer money to subsidize enrollment in courses that mainly have “consumption” value.
“Liberal Arts” have mostly been devalued by the leftists that teach it, they have turned it into something else
““Liberal Arts” have mostly been devalued by the leftists that teach it, they have turned it into something else”
Agreed.
I started Rutgers College in 1968- tuition was $200.00
a semester,so my NJ State Scholarship of 500.00 a year
paid tuition the whole year- not until my last year was
tuition increased. Can’t remember what Board was.
While ours (in Oz)have become diploma mills for foreign students.
“Most of those injuries were caused by the fact early airbags only deployed in one way: full, rapid inflation. “
Tell me about it. A few years ago a friend of mine bought an older car with an air bag. I told him how dangerous it was and he promptly had me disable it for him (it was either that or junking the car - he refused to put any future buyer at risk). LOL.
The state education bureaucracies have mirrored the feds.
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/k-12-education-subsidies
Bloated bureaucrats BUMP!
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